In 1947, when
E.P. Dutton decided to use a specialized imprint for their line of
detective novels, what they came up with was a series of books which
were designated “Guilt Edged” mysteries. The logo, an example of
which you will see somewhat to the right and below, consisted of a
gentleman in hat with squared-off upraised arms (as if designating a
touchdown). This insignia was often seen on the front cover of
the dust jacket, but sometimes not. In such cases the logo would
be seen on the spine. (See Run,
Killer, Run, by William Campbell Gault, as a prime example of
such an occurrence.)
The line of Guilt
Edged books continued through 1956, producing a number of books well
worth collecting, if one could afford to do so. The dedicated
collector with a small bank account will get stymied, we believe, by
trying to obtain a full run of First Editions in Dust Jacket for one of
the authors below. We will leave to you to decide to which author
we are referring.
Taken as an entirety,
the books themselves tend strongly to be of the tough, hard-boiled
variety, beginning (alphabetically) with Earle Baskinsy’s single novel
for Dutton, and ending with the four books by Lionel White which
appeared under the Guilt Edged imprint.
As a matter of fact,
and it is certainly worth pointing out, only a small handful of the
books in this checklist were written by female authors, one of whom was
not Beverley Nichols. This somewhat unexpected imbalance must
have occurred as a deliberate plan of action on the part of the
editorial staff at Dutton. It could not have been purely
coincidental. Researchers in pursuit of a doctoral dissertation
should take note.
The data below is presented
as a checklist, alphabetical by author, as previously mentioned, not
chronologically. Books by a single author are listed by
date. If an author had more than one book appear in one year, the
order of publication is as given.
Several books (and
their authors) are relatively obscure. Most of this list has been
compiled without actually having the books in hand. Any
information that you can add would be appreciated. After the
first posting Tapani Bagge, who has translated the book into Finnish,
very kindly pointed out that Fred Brown’s The Far Cry was missing in
action. He was right, and we’ve fixed it.
Thanks also to Jeff Falco
for catching several serious typographical errors
and tracking down one of the titles that had eluded us earlier.
(He also suggests that
the gent in the logo is, more appropriately, being held up or
arrested. He very well may be correct on this.) Al Hubin,
as usual, provided his able assistance in
matters bibliographical.
One last thing. In all
likelihood, as more research is done, the information on this page will
change accordingly. There will be revisions, additions, and as
much as we hate to admit it, corrections. As you use this
checklist for your own purposes, please keep that in mind, and always
come back to this page for the latest updated version, in terms of what
we know then.
Added most recently, for
example, is
a chronological
listing of all of the books in the series, using the actual dates
of
publication. For a page of more cover images, go here.
Also:

February 13, 2006.
Expanded notes for both Earle Basinsky and Edgar Box.

September 23, 2008.
Revised entry for the series characters in the George Griswold novels.

Earle Basinsky

The Big Steal
1955

Basinsky was an air force buddy of Mickey Spillane,
who after the war, encouraged him to go into writing. Spillane
also helped to promote him highly. As you can see from the dust
jacket of The Big Steal,
Mickey’s name may have been even more noticeable than
Baskinsky’s. The latter’s second
and final book, Death Is a Cold,
Keen Edge, was published in 1956 as a paperback
original from Signet. He died soon thereafter, only in his
mid-30s.
In The Big
Steal a police detective accused of stealing ransom money is
forced to deal out justice on his own. A scan of the first page
of the typed manuscript can be find here.
Other than the two novels, Basinsky had three
published short stories, one each in Manhunt,
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine,
and The Saint Detective Magazine.
The stories are the subject of a special edition of Peter
Enfantino’s regular column
for M*F on the crime fiction
digest magazines of the 1950s.

Edgar Box

Death in the Fifth Position

1952

Death Before Bedtime

1953

Death Likes It Hot

1954

It was not widely known until some time after their
publication that these three books were written by Gore Vidal.
The series character in each is Peter Carter Sargeant II, a public
relations consultant in New York City. Vidal wrote these books,
it is said, when he was being blacklisted for writing The City and the Pillar, a book
controversial for its acceptance of homosexuality.
These books are Vidal’s only works of crime or
detective fiction, with one exception, also published under a pen
name. That book was a Gold Medal paperback original, Thieves Fall Out, as by Cameron Kay
(1953). Once the fact was made known, it became an instant
collector’s item.

Paula
Bramlette & Margaret Yates

Death
Casts a Vote 1948

This pair of authors wrote one earlier Dutton
mystery, The Widow’s Walk, in
1945. Since both books take place in the US, an identification of
the two women as Australian, as one publication states, seems to be
in error. Other reliable sources indicate that Paula
Bramlette was a native Texan (1917-1992), while according to an item
discovered by Jeff Falco in
the New York Times,
Margaret (Polk) Yates (1915-1984?) came out as a debutante in
1933. She is not, however, the Margaret
Tayler Yates who wrote four detective novels for Macmillan between 1937
and 1942.
A Manhattan-based connection between the two women
is suggested by the fact
that in 1943 Paula Bramlette graduated from the Columbia School of
Journalism, where she later established a scholarship in honor of her
parents. While the book itself is set in New York City, the
mystery is about a murder which is threatening to derail a Texas
oil tycoon’s campaign for the
Presidency. Trying to
crack the case is Police Captain O’Sullivan. (Thanks again to
Jeff for supplying the details.)

Fredric Brown

The Fabulous Clipjoint

1947

Ed & Am Hunter

The Dead Ringer

1948

Ed & Am Hunter

Murder Can Be Fun

1948

The Bloody Moonlight

1949

Ed & Am Hunter

The Screaming Mimi

1949

Compliments of a Fiend

1950

Ed & Am Hunter

Night of the Jabberwock

1950

Death Has Many Doors

1951

Ed & Am Hunter

The Far Cry

1951

We All Killed Grandma

1952

The Deep End

1952

Mostly Murder

1953

[story collection]

His Name Was Death

1954

The Wench Is Dead

1955

The Lenient Beast

1956

Fredric Brown is one of the few authors who are as
well known, and as collectible, in both the mystery and science fiction
field. Most of his books of SF are collections of short stories,
some of them very short indeed – and often remembered for that
very same fact.
Brown’s first work appeared in the pulp
magazines, beginning in the late 1930s and continuing through the war
years. Some of the books above were based on shorter versions
that appeared in the pulps. His first novel did not come until
1947, The Fabulous Clipjoint,
the first of six books in which the unique nephew/uncle private eye
team of Ed and Am Hunter appeared. (The sixth, The Late Lamented, was published by
Dutton in 1959, but by that time the Guilt Edged designation had
already been retired.)
Based in Chicago, the pair of sleuths made up
the Hunter & Hunter Detective Agency. Ed was the nephew,
young and brash, while his uncle Am was the experienced one, an
ex-carnival worker who kept Ed’s head on straight while he was
otherwise losing it to every good-looking woman who came along in book
after book.

Glyn Carr

Murder on the Matterhorn

1953

The Youth Hostel Murders

1953

Of the eighteen mystery novels written by Glyn Carr
that featured mountain-climbing detective and government agent
Abercrombie Lewker, only seven have been published in the US, and only
five of these appeared contemporaneously with the British
editions. Three of Lewker’s adventures were published under
Carr’s real name, Showell Styles.
Settings for the Lewker books include all of
the obvious ones, and some that aren’t: Norway, Austria, Switzerland,
Nepal, Majorca, France and Wales. Surprisingly enough,
“Filthy,” as he is called by his friends, is described as short, bald
and fat. Perhaps there is hope for all of us.

Styles-Carr had a
life filled with many of the same kind of escapades as his hero, seeing
much duty with the Royal Navy during World War II. His first
book, Death on Milestone Buttress
(Geoffrey Bles, 1951) was recently published by Rue Morgue Press
(2002), its first ever publication in the US. His second and
third books were published by Dutton as Guilt Edged mysteries.
Born in 1908 and now in his 90s, Styles-Carr
makes his home in his native Wales.

(Thanks to Rue Morgue Press
for being the source of some of the information above.)

James Hadley Chase

The Double Shuffle

1953

Steve Harmas

I’ll Bury My Dead

1954

James Hadley Chase, whose real name was René
Brabazon Raymond, wrote nearly 90 detective thrillers under several
names, beginning with No Orchids for
Miss Blandish in 1939. Even though he was British,
most of his books took place in the US, in an ersatz Chandler-Hammett
vein, although they were reasonably entertaining in their own right.
The two that came out from Dutton were in the middle of
his career. Most of Chase’s novels were standalones, but
insurance investigator Steve Harmas was one of several characters that
managed to appear more than once.

Murdo Coombs

A Moment
of
Need 1947

This is the only book
for which prolific mystery writer Frederick C. Davis used Coombs as a
pseudonym. Not only did Davis write 40 or so hardcover
novels under his name and others, but he also wrote a multitude of
short fiction for the pulp magazines. A Moment of Need
is an expanded version of the pulp novelette, “Thirteen Shrouds,” which
appeared in the October 1946 issue of Dime
Detective under Davis’s real name – an entry in the private eye
Thackeray Hackett “Headliner Files” series Davis wrote for that
magazine in the 40s. The plot of the novel involves
Hackett’s search for a famous stage star and a gruesome crime that was
probably pretty shocking to mystery novel readers in 1947.

A. B.
Cunningham

Death Haunts the Dark Lane

1948

Murder Without Weapons

1949

The Hunter Is the Hunted

1950

The Killer Watches the Manhunt

1950

Skeleton in the Closet

1951

Who Killed Pretty Becky Low?

1951

Strange Return

1952

Albert Benjamin Cunningham was an English
professor whose bent for mystery resulted in a long series of
detective novels featuring Sheriff Jess Roden of rural Deer Lick,
Kentucky. His deductions, it is said, were based on common sense
and sharp observation. Beginning with Murder at Deer Link in 1939, all of
his books were published by Dutton. Only the ones above were
Guilt Edged mysteries. (See also the entry below.)

Estil Dale

The
Last Survivor
1952

In taking a break from his Jess Roden series, or
making an attempt to go in a new direction, A. B. Cunningham (above)
used this pseudonym for this one last mystery novel only.

Robert
George
Dean

The Body Was Quite Cold

1951

The Case of Joshua Locke

1951

The private eye who solves the cases involved in
both of these novels is Tony Hunter, who worked for the Schmidt Agency
in New York City. At least moderately hard-boiled, Hunter
appeared in ten novels in all. There were seven in the five year
period 1938-1942, then these two from Dutton, followed by one last one
for Doubleday’s Crime Club in 1953.
From the author’s obituary in the Washington Post, we have learned
that Robert George Dean, who died in 1989, was a Wall Street broker
before beginning his writing career and a Red Cross official during the
1940s. His
other works of crime fiction include four novels in
1936-37 featuring the little-known Pat Thompson, one standalone in
1939, and three novels as by George
Griswold. (See the entry below.)

Lois Eby and John
C. Fleming

Hell Hath No Fury

1947

The Velvet Fleece

1947

Eby and Fleming were Hoosier cousins who, in the 40s
at
least, collaborated long distance. (She lived in California and
he
in Indiana until also moving west to continue the partnership.)
They wrote five mysteries together, including a pair in
1946, also from Dutton. Also to their collaborative
credit are several other novels, numerous radio plays, B movie scripts,
and a handful of stories for such
magazines as Street & Smith's
Detective Story
and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.
The mystery thriller The Velvet Fleece was
made into a film called LARCENY
in 1948, starring John Payne and Joan Caulfield. It also is
one of the novels covered by Bill Pronzini in Son of Gun in Cheek.

William
Campbell Gault

Don’t Cry for Me

1952

The Bloody Bokhara

1952

The Canvas Coffin

1953

Blood on the
Boards

1953

Run, Killer, Run

1954

Ring Around Rosa

1955

Brock “The Rock” Callahan

Bill Gault began writing for
the pulps in 1937,
specializing in sports and mystery/detective stories, before branching
out to such slick magazines as The
Saturday Evening Post in the 1950s. He also
switched to novels in 1952, and his first six books in hardcover were
done by Dutton as a major factor in their Guilt Edged line. Mixed
in with the six was Shakedown
(Ace, 1953), a paperback original published as by Roney
Scott.
Gault is probably
known best for his stories of private eyes Brock Callahan and Joe Puma,
the latter first showing up in Shakedown.
Callahan, an ex-football player, made his initial appearance in Ring Around Rosa.
(Later on, in a remarkable tour-de-force, Gault audaciously killed off
Puma in The Cana Diversion
(Raven House, 1980) and had Callahan solve the crime!)
All of Gault’s books take place in the Los
Angeles-Southern California area, a fertile ground for hard-boiled
fiction. His earliest novels, from 1963 and earlier, are
especially highly regarded by
fans of the field. Don’t
Cry for Me won an Edgar for
Best First Mystery Novel in 1953, and in 1984 the author himself was
awarded THE
EYE Life Achievement Award from the Private
Eye Writers of America. His career spanned six full decades.

George
Griswold

A Gambit for Mr. Groode

1952

A Checkmate by the Colonel

1953

Red Pawns

1954

As detective novels began a phase-down in the 1950s,
Robert
George Dean (entry above) switched over to a series of four spy and
espionage novels under the name of George Griswold. The fourth
novel, The Pinned Man,
appeared from Little, Brown in 1954.
Appearing or mentioned in all four books is Mr.
Groode, although
he is seldom a leading player. He is completely offstage and
never actually appears in A Checkmate by the Colonel. He
takes a more active role in The Pinned Man, which is told from
the viewpoint of the main character, William Pepper, whom Groode
assists throughout the book. In Red Pawns, he shows up
only toward the end. Working largely as a mysterious figure in
the
background, he is a master of disguise and in fact, Groode is not his
real name. As additional series characters, Jim Furlong appears
in the first two books and Pepper in the last two.
(Thanks to Peggy Bowen and Jamie Sturgeon for
providing the information that helped to create a complete rewrite
of this entry!)

William Fryer
Harvey

The Arm
of Mrs. Egan and Other
Strange
Stories 1952

Also known as W. F. Harvey, the author of this
collection of weird, supernatural tales was born in 1885 and was
inspired to become a writer by absorbing the works of Edgar Allan Poe
at an early age. His lungs were damaged during World War I,
and he died early at the age of only 52. Harvey’s work
largely remained unnoticed until the movie THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS, based
on one of his short stories, was released in 1946.The Arm of Mrs.
Egan was published first in England by J. M. Dent & Sons in
1951. Of the sixteen stories included, a character named Nurse
Wilkie appeared in ten of them.

Paul A. Holmes

Murder
Buttoned Up 1948

Murder Buttoned Up,
an intriguing title, is the only mystery written by this author
(1901-1985). Little else would be known about him, except that he
became the subject of the second half of his daughter Janet Holmes’
book of poetry, The Green Tuxedo
(Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1998). In this sequence of
poems, narrative and newspaper clippings, the author creates a portrait
of her father, who was also a successful journalist, based on childhood
memories and entries in a diary found after his death.

(Thanks to Jim
Kay Books of Sacramento CA for the digital camera cover shot of the
jacket.)

Clifford Knight

Dark Abyss

1949

Hangman’s Choice

1949

The Yellow Cat

1950

Death of a Big Shot

1951

The Dark Road

1951

Death and Little Brother

1952

Born in 1886, Clifford Knight’s mystery-writing
career began in 1937 with the publication of The Affair of the Scarlet Crab, the
first of eighteen such “affairs” solved by his only series character,
Huntoon Rogers, an English professor who turned on occasion into an
amateur detective. These novels were published through 1947,
first by Dodd, Mead and then by McKay. The final six novels, all
from Dutton, did not feature Rogers, but were stand-alone thrillers
only.

Hugh McCutcheon

Murder at the Angel

1952

Anthony Howard,
Inspector McKeller

None Shall Sleep Tonight

1953

Inspector McKeller

His career extending from 1951 to 1981, McCutcheon
was the English author of 21 works of crime fiction, and as Hugh
Davie-Martin, four more. Most of them were never published in the
US, probably deemed too “British” for readers in this country.
His first two are those listed above. Murder at the Angel appeared as The Angel of Light in the UK, and
of all of the books in this list, it may be the scarcest, as not a
single copy under either title appeared on a recent search on www.bookfinder.com.
Anthony Howard, who appeared in other book with McKeller and one on his
own, was (it is suspected) one of those talented amateurs who delight
in assisting Scotland Yard.

Christopher Monig

The
Burned Man
1956

Behind the Monig monicker was prolific mystery
author Kendell Foster Crossen, who died in 1981 at the age of 71.
As Crossen he wrote only six detective novels, three of them paperback
originals in the 1940s. He is probably more well known as M. E.
Chaber, writer of a long series of novels starring intrepid insurance
investigator Milo March, also a former CIA employee.The Burned Man
was the first of four similar adventures worked on by Brian Brett, who
also worked as an insurance claims adjuster. The other three were
also published by Dutton, but they did not appear until after the Guilt
Edged logo was retired.

Beverley
Nichols

No Man’s
Street

1954

The Moonflower Murder

1955

Death to Slow Music

1956

Contrary to possible expectations, English author
Beverley Nichols is not the one of the female authors in this
checklist. His series character, Horatio Green,
appeared in all three of the books above as well as two later ones,
also from Dutton.
In one novel, Green is described as “the amateur
detective with a super sense of smell and a love of gardens.”
One source on the Internet suggests that
Nichols himself is best remembered for his books on gardening.
Not being very conversant with gardening books, we are not sure.
On the other hand, Horatio Green’s name does not come up often at
gatherings of mystery fans.

Thomas Polsky

The
Cudgel
1950

Polsky, who is described as having been a
newspaperman in the 1930s, wrote three novels in the period 1939-1941
which featured as a series character one L. F. “Scoop” Griddle, whom
one imagines was a hard-hitting, crime-solving newspaperman. The
titles of these books all began with Curtains
for the... and ended with either Copper or Editor or Judge.
After the war, The
Cudgel was a stand-alone mystery taking place in the hill
country of North Carolina.

Nancy
Rutledge

Cry
Murder
1954

Nancy Rutledge, one of the small number of female
authers in this list, was the
author of ten works of crime fiction between 1944 and 1960 under her
own name, two of them
published only in England. She also had one mystery novel
published as by Leigh Bryson, a Handi-Book paperback original in
1947. Cry
Murder was the only one of her books which was published by
Dutton. It is set in the Midwest and has a theatrical setting.
All but unknown today, Rutledge was popular enough
in the 1950s and 60s to have eight mystery novels serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, and one
that
appeared complete in one 1960 issue of
Redbook. (Two of these are possibly not crime
fiction, but from their titles, not all of which match up with the book
versions, the other seven definitely are.)

Mickey
Spillane

I, the Jury

1947

Mike Hammer

My Gun Is Quick

1950

Mike Hammer

Vengeance Is Mine!

1950

Mike Hammer

One Lonely Night

1951

Mike Hammer

The Big Kill

1951

Mike Hammer

The Long Wait

1951

Kiss Me, Deadly

1952

Mike Hammer

What can one say about Mickey Spillane that
has not already been said? His tough and ultimately sexy private
eye novels revolutionized the world of mystery and detective field like
those of almost no other authors, except for giants like Poe, Doyle,
Christie, Hammett, Chandler and very few others.
From the back cover of Kiss Me, Deadly one can read that
15 million copies of Spillane’s books in all editions had been sold in
five years, including the Signet paperbacks. Even boys in eighth
grade cloakrooms read them out loud to each other, especially the good
parts.
I was there. I know. (This is
Steve. I do not know where Victor was.)
One other thing. Spillane’s most recent book, Something’s Down There, was
published in December 2003, which is recent enough to consider him
still active, one of perhaps only two of the Guilt Edged authors who
can make that
claim. (A collection of short earlier work appeared in December
2004, published by Crippen & Landru.)

Stewart Sterling

Dead Sure

1949

Gil Vine

Alarm in the Night

1949

Ben Pedley

Dead of Night

1950

Gil Vine

Nightmare at Noon

1951

Ben Pedley

The Big Ear

1953

Stewart Sterling, whose real name was Prentice
Winchell, was another fiction factory who appenticed in the pulp
magazines, beginning with the legendary Black Mask of the 1920s. He
is said to have written 400 magazine stories, 500 half-hour radio
shows, plus about 30 hardcover mysteries under several names, including
Spencer Dean, among others.
Either as Sterling or as Dean, Winchell seemed to
deliberately stay away from the standard private eye sort of detective,
preferring to go with “off brand” sleuths in his stories instead.
Ben Pedley was a fire marshal, for example, while Gil Vine was a hotel
dick. Spencer Dean’s primary character was Don Cadee, a
department store detective.

Sam S.
Taylor

Sleep No More

1949

No Head for Her Pillow

1952

So Cold My Bed

1953

All three of the novels above are cases solved by
Los Angeles-based private eye Neal Cotten, the only mysteries written
by radio scriptwriter Sam S. Taylor, who died in 1958. (*)
The books are described by others as being in the hard-boiled Philip
Marlowe vein, and given the Southern California locale, this is easy to
believe. He was also the author of one pseudonymous paperback
original, Brenda (Gold Medal,
1952) as by Lehi Zane.
Perhaps of note to PI fans is one final Neal Cotten
novelette, “The General Slept Here,” which appeared in the April, 1955,
issue of Manhunt.

(*) This statement, we have discovered later, is in
error. Mr. Taylor did not die until 1994. See The Compleat Sam S. Taylor
on the Mystery*File
blog.

E. Lee
Waddell

Murder at
Drake’s
Anchorage 1949

Without knowing that the “E.” stands for
Eleanor, you would not know that E. Lee Waddell is one of the small
group of women
who were published in the Guilt Edged line. This was also
her
only mystery, and at the present time this is all we know about
her. From the front flap inside the dust jacket, it is learned
that the story itself “takes place at a private school built on a
desolate mountain ridge of the California sea coast.”

Lionel
White

To Find a Killer

1954

Clean Break

1955

Flight Into Terror

1955

The House Next Door

1956

Lionel White is probably most remembered for the dozens of
paperback originals he wrote for Gold Medal, Signet, Avon and
others. He also wrote many hardcovers for Dutton, however, and
the
first four of them were part of the Guilt Edged line.
His novels were invariably tough crime thrillers, often
with a touch of noir. The novel Clean
Break (pictured) was the
basis for the movie THE KILLING
(1956), directed by Stanley Kubrick and scripted in part by Jim
Thompson. Also based on one of White’s crime novels was THE BIG CAPER (1957), published in
paperback by Gold Medal in 1955.